project manager

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10 Ways to Build an Exceptional Brand as a Project Manager

exceptional branding

Recently I came across an interesting article by Karin Deacon, Managing Director of PMideas. She talks about professional Project Managers creating their own exceptional personal brand.

E-X-C-E-P-T-I-O-N-A-L Branding

When the word exceptional is viewed as an acronym, it contains several clues about how to set oneself apart.

1.      Education and Experience make you ‘Xcel’

Project managers can excel through education and experience. According to Deacon, education develops “figure-it-out” resourcefulness and experience reduces risk, as project managers can apply the lessons they’ve already learned.  Therefore, project managers should never stop acquiring new knowledge and skills in their quest for an exceptional brand.

2.      Excellent Communicator

Communication has been identified as possibly the most important reason behind a project’s success or failure.  Project manager should always be aware of the conversational styles of other parties, cultural issues, relationships, personalities as well as the overall context of the situation.

3.      Being Ethical

The question of ethics is really all based on who you are when no one is looking.  Some questions to ask are: “Am I treating others with respect?”; Am I being honest with myself and others?”

4.      Being Passionate

Great leaders do only demonstrate passion, but they also connect their passion to their purpose with the end result always being greater performance.  This is the role that passion plays in building an exceptional brand.

5.      Team-builder

Project managers who are team builders, create teams that are motivated by the right things, challenged, have the ability to gain mastery over their set tasks and who are self-directed. You know you have built a great team when you see synergy from team members working together to achieve greater results as a team than they would have individually.

6.      Influence and Power

Influencing is a strategy focused on the sharing of power and reliance on interpersonal skills to influence other to co-operate together to achieve certain goals.  Exceptional brands influence their teams by leading by example, clarifying how decisions will be made while using flexible interpersonal styles that adjust to suit the audience.

7.      Organiser

A project manager must be organised with the ability to handle multiple tasks with the appropriate focus.  There needs to be a balance between being people- and task orientated when organising your time and attention.

8.      Effective Networker

Building effective networks is also an important part of the job.  A true networker stays connected, in tune and in touch at all times.

9.      Awareness

Applying cultural, political and environmental awareness are also key to success.  The skilful use of politics and power helps project managers to be effective.

10.  Leadership

Project leadership is all about focusing the efforts of groups/teams towards a common goal and enabling them to work as a team. It also translates into the ability to get things done through others and builds respect and trust. Emphasis is always placed on communicating the vision, as well as motivating and inspiring the team to achieve high performance.

Journey from Mediocre to Exceptional

The journey from being mediocre (just another project manager) to being exceptional is purely a matter of choice and discipline.  Start with the personal brand you wish to live and breath.  Lastly, remember that the exceptional brand is a journey and not a destination.

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Linky

Motivational Theory – What is the Relevance in 2010

What motivates people? As a project manager, it’s very important to understand what motivates your team members for high performance and satisfaction.  If you understand these intrinsic motivating factors, the best you can do is to create the environment where such a person can motivate him/herself.

What really motivates us

Most of us believe that the best way to motivate ourselves and others is with external rewards like money—the carrot-and-stick approach. That’s a mistake, Daniel H. Pink says in, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, his persuasive new book. The secret to high performance and satisfaction is the deep human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.

According to Dan Pink there is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does. Looking at the results from scientific research on human motivation, the carrot and sticks methods worked successfully in the 20th century, but it’s the wrong way to motivate people for today’s challenges. Extrinsic motivators may still work as a motivator for many kinds of simpler tasks with a simple set of rules and a clear destination to reach. But it certainly doesn’t work for most project tasks and for creative solutions type of work.

Research has proven that financial incentives can cause poorer performance. Rewards narrow our focus and concentrate the mind. Rewards also restrict our potential and harms creative thinking.

I’m sure you can see the problem here. But what is the solution?

Intrinsic motivation

There is a whole new approach built around intrinsic motivation. This relates to the desire to do things because they matter, because we like it, because they’re interesting and because they’re part of something important.

According to Dan Pink the three elements of true motivation are:

  1. Autonomy: the urge to direct our own lives
  2. Mastery: the desire to get better and better at something that matters
  3. Purpose: the yearning to do what we do in service of something larger than ourselves.

An example of these motivators in action is ROWE (results only work environment).

People show up when they want and they don’t need to be in the office at a certain time. They just have to get the work done. How, where and when they do it, is totally up to them.

Where ROWE is implemented, the results are interesting.  Productivity goes up, worker engagement goes up, worker satisfaction goes up and turnover goes down.

In projects it could be called DBOE (Deliverable-based only environment). This means that team members are managed based on their output.

I have been part of this type of work environments and I can testify that it works. Working in an autonomous environment allows the worker to draw on internal motivation to perform well. In this environment I also manage project team members based on their deliverables and the quality of the output.  I fulfil the role of a facilitator and a leader more than a manager. Motivated workers really manage themselves.

A good real life example of this is at Google where workers may spend 20% of their time per week, usually Fridays, to work on anything they want. They have autonomy over their time, their task, their team and their techniques. About half of Google’s new products are birthed during the 20% time, e.g. Gmail, Orkut.

If high performance and job satisfaction is what you are after for your team in 2010, it is best to create the environment where intrinsic motivating factors drive teams’ performance and creates a sense of satisfaction.

About the author: Linky Van Der Merwe is a Project Management Consultant and an IT Project Manager with 15 years IT industry experience and 12 years Project Management experience.

Video: The surprising truth about what motivates us – adapted from a talk by Dan Pink.

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I Want To Be A Project Manager When I Grow Up Part 2

Take Project Management Out-of-the-box

project manager

This post is aimed at existing project managers. There is a growing trend worldwide, where children are encouraged to take their parents in to school to talk about their jobs. I have never been asked to go in to my children’s school!

They have had a policeman in who no doubt talked about road safety and not talking to strangers, they have had a nurse in who talked about healthcare issues and how to look after yourself, and they have had a fireman in to explain about the dangers of fires and what to do if you are in such danger. These are all important and seemingly (to children) exciting jobs. But project management is neither apparently exciting nor does it have a uniform (something I note that the people who have gone in to school have in common).

How do we make some-one with authority, accountability and responsibility for managing a project to achieve specific objectives, sound exciting?

Should we perhaps design a uniform for project managers? We know we are exciting already. We can easily state that “doctors make people better”, that “policemen catch bad people”, but we can’t say: “project managers manage projects” because that doesn’t tell people anything. We all know what it means but my children don’t and my friends don’t know either.

The current situation of project managers

Project managers can be summarised as follows:

  • We are generally good at what we do
  • We are generally successful in our endeavours
  • We are getting better all the time
  • We do deliver “exciting things”
  • (We are mostly nice people I‟m sure)

So how can we get “out of that box” and be exciting to the world in general so that they can understand us and appreciate what we do?

Be proud and be happy

All in all we have a lot to be both proud and happy about. The role of a project manager is a great job, whether you intend on pursuing a project management career or whether you intend to move in to a business role within a project based business. Projects should never bore you, they are all different and each day will bring new challenges and interests. You will never stop learning those lessons and building those relationships.

Finally reach out with what you do

Consider doing some or all of the following in order to help yourself (and project management in general) out of the box:

  • Tell people you are a project manager. Don’t be shy; be brave and come clean about your job, that you should be loud and proud of.
  • Have that ’elevator’ speech ready when people ask you what you do. But don’t say “I’m a project manager, I manage projects”. I recently asked the question “How would you explain project management to an Alien from outer space” and one of my favourite answers came from Penny Pullman “Getting something new and exciting done with a group of people!”
  • Speak at non-Project Management events. People like what they hear about projects, project management and project managers.
  • Network with a broad group of people, again outside project management.
  • Start some LinkedIn discussions and get some great interaction with people from all over the world.
  • Twitter and Blog and Facebook and any and every social networking mechanism that works for you.
  • Offer your services outside of your work, you will find that many volunteer organisations are crying out for your projects skills – even if they don’t know what they are.
  • And finally why not scare your kids and go to that school or college day and talk about your exciting role of being a project manager. Make sure children know what project management is by the time that they leave school and that they had some exposure to projects being done.

“Tell me and I’ll forget, show me and I may remember, involve me and I’ll understand” Chinese Proverb

Source: “Getting Project Management ‘Out of the Box’” by Peter Taylor, Author of ‘The Lazy Project Manager’.

About the author: Linky Van Der Merwe is a Project Management Consultant and an IT Project Manager with 15 years IT industry experience and 12 years Project Management experience. She consults with small-medium business owners and service professionals about project management processes and tools, best practices and successful delivery through projects. She can be reached at linky@virtualprojectconsulting.com

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I Want To Be A Project Manager When I Grow Up

Recently I came across a good presentation about taking project management ‘out of the box’. What this means, is to spread the word outside our project management community about what a great bunch of people we are and how project management is a valuable skill to pretty much everybody. It is about telling people what you do and what the typical working day of a project manager looks like.

Thinking back at how I ended up becoming a project manager, I remember landing in project management by accident, but staying here on purpose. It is because it is such a good fit for my personal strengths and skills. But I never grew up thinking that I wanted to become a project manager. I didn’t know of the existence of such a career choice and much less of what was expected of such a person.  So it is to this day. How many young people, school leavers, know what are the duties and qualities of a good project manager?

Also, project management is not a typical career choice. It is usually part of many advanced management courses that are offered at universities and colleges all over the world.  Typically, you would study to become something else. Then by portraying the qualities that would make you fit for an effective and efficient project manager in your industry, often project opportunities would come your way. Before you know it, you would have transformed to become a professional project manager. Read about my journey to project management in my blog: About Project Management Passion.

How important is project management in today’s world?

With one-fifth of the world’s GDP being spent on projects this year clearly business isn’t just about operations anymore. Competitiveness and innovation is what drives projects in this world.

We are part of a dynamic, resourceful and ever evolving world that demands change as part of its survival. And change demands projects and projects demand project managers. So it seems we, the project managers of the world, are pretty important in the scheme of things. Mostly not “life or death” important but still important enough.

Now is the time that it is even more critical to succeed, and succeed with a higher level of certainty than seen before since those projects that will be commissioned in the future, as well as the ones that are allowed to continue in the current climate, will be expected to deliver higher business impact, be under closer scrutiny from senior management and be under far more pressure to succeed.

And guess what, who will be the one that is under the most pressure, the project manager!

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Source: “Getting Project Management ‘Out of the Box'” by Peter Taylor, Author of ‘The Lazy Project Manager’.

About the author: Linky Van Der Merwe is a Project Management Consultant and an IT Project Manager with 15 years IT industry experience and 12 years Project Management experience. She consults with small-medium business owners and service professionals about project management processes and tools, best practices and successful delivery through projects. She can be reached at linky@virtualprojectconsulting.com

Linky

Project Management Closure: Best Practice for Project Learning

The challenges of project learning

Project Management Closure: Best Practice for Project Learning Audio

Stakeholder Management Best Practices Learning from project experience is an essential function that the project manager needs to facilitate during project management closure.

The philosopher George Santayana said, “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

This is sometimes referred to as Santayana’s Law of Repetitive Consequences; and is nowhere more evident than in project based work.   The increasing pace of change in the workplace often makes it difficult to learn from experience as processes and personnel are constantly changing.

I have experienced this fast paced phenomenon while doing project management work for a corporate client recently. Following standard best practice in project management closure, I always schedule a proper project closure workshop at the end of projects. For many of my project teams this was their first experience of doing project reviews of any kind. Yet they derived so much value from revisiting the original project goal and objectives, the scope, milestones and deliverables that were achieved. By the time we discussed Lessons Learned, all team members were actively participating.

Project Reviews

I enjoy these project reviews as it confirms a sense of achievement, pride and satisfaction from project completion for all team members. The lessons learned are then logged and archived with other project documentation for future reference. I usually distribute the project close-out reports with the lessons learned to the wider departmental teams in recognition of the project team’s efforts and to make their colleagues aware of their project achievements.

In my opinion, to successfully learn from project experience requires a regular and consistent approach that can be incorporated into any project management methodology.  Here are a few suggestions to help any project team learn from experience:

  1. Establish a venue for sharing lessons-learned: It doesn’t matter whether you call it a post-mortem, a project review, or a project closure workshop, most organizations don’t do them—but they should.
  2. Share what has been learned: Although most organizations don’t bother with a project review, those that do don’t always create an environment that encourages real learning—and even fewer share what was learned.
  3. Don’t make learning the next corporate initiative: It’s natural for organizations to try to formalize the learning process into the next corporate project.  The natural learning process should be encouraged and lessons learned can and should even be part of project progress discussions.

Don’t make learning from projects a one-time activity or something to be done when time permits: Project learning should be ongoing and interactive—with all project team members actively participating.

Every organization has different needs.  Some rely on their project software and methodology to help facilitate the learning process.  I think that’s good, but even organizations that don’t use any specific project management tools need to create an environment where project learning can regularly take place.

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About the author: Linky Van Der Merwe is a Microsoft Project Management Consultant and an IT Project Manager with 15 years IT industry experience and 12 years Project Management experience. She consults with small-medium business owners and service professionals about project management processes and tools, best practices and successful delivery through projects. She can be reached at linky@virtualprojectconsulting.com
Make Projects Work for You

Linky

5 Personal Goals For Every Project Manager

Want to know how to become a 5-star project manager?

5-star project manager

By Jason Westland

A Project Manager needs to manage people, budget, suppliers, equipment—the list is never ending. The trick is to be focused. Set yourself 5 personal goals to achieve. If you can meet these simple goals for each project, then you will achieve total success. So read on, to learn…

The 5 Goals of a Project Manager

These goals are generic to all industries and all types of projects. Regardless of your level of experience in project management, set these 5 goals for every project you manage.

Goal 1: To finish on time

This is the oldest but trickiest goal in the book. It’s the most difficult because the requirements often change during the project and the schedule was probably optimistic in the first place.

To succeed, you need to manage your scope very carefully. Implement a change control process so that any changes to the scope are properly managed.

Always keep your plan up to date, recording actual vs. planned progress. Identify any deviations from plan and fix them quickly.

Goal 2: To finish under budget

To make sure that your project costs don’t spiral, you need to set a project budget at the start to compare against. Include in this budget, all of the types of project costs that will accrue, whether they are to do with people, equipment, suppliers or materials. Then work out how much each task in your plan is going to cost to complete and track any deviations from this plan.

Make sure that if you over-spend on some tasks, that you under-spend on others. In this way, you can control your spend and deliver under  budget.

Goal 3: To meet the requirements

The goal here is to meet the requirements that were set for the project at the start. Whether the requirements were to install a new IT system, build a bridge or implement new processes, your project needs to produce solutions which meet these requirements 100%.

Ensure that you have a detailed enough set of requirements at the beginning. If they are ambiguous in any way, then what was initially seen as a small piece of work could become huge, taking up valuable time and resources to complete.

Goal 4: To keep customers happy

You could finish your project on time, under budget and have met 100% of the requirements—but still have unhappy customers. This is usually because their expectations have changed since the project started and have not been properly managed.

To ensure that your project sponsor, customer and other stakeholders are happy at the end of your project, you need to manage their expectations carefully. Make sure you always keep them properly informed of progress. “Keep it real” by giving them a crystal clear view of progress to date. Let them voice their concerns or ideas regularly. Tell them upfront when you can’t deliver on time, or when a change needs to be made. Openness and honesty are always the best tools for setting customer expectations.

Goal 5: To ensure a happy team

If you can do all of this with a happy team, then you’ll be more than willing to do it all again for the next project. And that’s how your staff will feel also. Staff satisfaction is critical to your project’s success.

So keep your team happy by rewarding and recognizing them for their successes. Assign them work that complements their strengths and conduct team building exercises to boost morale. With a happy motivated team, you can achieve anything!

And there you have it. The 5 goals you need to set yourself for every project and you will become a 5-star professional project manager.

Jason WestlandJason Westland has 15 years experience in the project management industry. From his experience he has created software to help speed up the management process. If you would like to find out more information about Jason’s online project management software visit ProjectManager.com.

Linky

7 Key Leadership Actions for Project Managers

Fulfilling the role of project manager for any length of time will call upon your leadership skills.  Especially in today’s complex world, the project management function is no longer a controlling function, but rather a function of leadership and facilitation.
7 Leadership skills for project managers

Project Leadership Skills

It has been said that the true measure as to whether someone is a leader is whether they have followers. Building a following as a leader is a vital component in your success and getting the results that you want. For a project manager your leadership reach is usually the project/program teams that you work with. This means that you don’t have the luxury of earning respect as a  leader over time, but you need to establish your credibility as a leader up front at the beginning of project.

So what are the 7 KEY leadership actions you can take to establish credibility as a leader?

Action 1: Demonstrate Competence

As the leader, people need to have confidence that you are a competent project manager. Being competent is not about being the expert in every area but having enough skill and experience to make effective decisions.

Action 2: Show Your Commitment

Project managers move between different organisational departments, different functional teams and sometimes they move between different companies (like contractors). While working with a particular organisation and functional team, it is of vital importance to demonstrate you commitment by working hard on a day to day basis. This will also set an example of the commitment you expect from your project team members.

Action 3: Be Consistent and Only Promise What You Can Deliver

Consistency is by far one of the key actions to establish yourself as a respected leader to be trusted. Consistent leadership requires you to be consistent with how you treat all people. Closely related to this is to only promise what you can deliver (agreed scope) and then to deliver as per requirements (satisfied stakeholders).

Action 4: Be an Active Listener

Most leaders are excellent at getting their points across verbally and in writing. Exceptional leaders are also exceptional listeners. Leadership requires you to pay attention to active listening.

Action 5: Prepare For Meetings and Presentations

You might have heard the statement, “Failing to plan is planning to fail”. Running a meeting or making the presentation is the easy bit. The key action is to always be prepared and have specific objectives or an agenda for every meeting.

Action 6: Take Responsibility

You get the rewards of being a leader and at the same time it comes with responsibility. When issues arise (as they always do), make a point of taking responsibility. You are ultimately accountable for the success of the project.

Action 7: Act with Integrity

A golden rule for all project managers in leadership positions is to make sure your behaviours or actions will be authentic and based on integrity.

Leadership is key

Leadership competence is not an optional project management skill, but a key part of being a successful, professional and efficient project manager. Make these 7 leadership actions part of your regular project manager make-up.  Credibility will come naturally as a result of applying these actions in your day-to-day management of projects. Your leadership skills will continue to grow stronger with experience; remember to enjoy the ride….

For future project management articles, please subscribe here, as well as to the blog (to the right).

About the author: Linky van der Merwe is a Microsoft Project Management Consultant and an IT Project Manager with more than 11 years Project Management experience.

She consults with business owners and service professionals about project management and project processes, best practices and successful delivery through projects. She is most experienced in corporate infrastructure projects (upgrades, migration, deployment etc) and process optimisation. She can be reached at linky@virtualprojectconsulting.com

Linky

How To Use Myers Briggs Personality Types As a Project Manager Tool

Following from the previous post on using Myers Briggs Personality Type Indicator as a project manager tool, this article will give even more clarity on how you can use the Myers Briggs Personality Types as an effective project management tool.

1. Recognize the components of the Jungian Indicator types

As a project manager you need to recognize the 8 components of the Myers Briggs Personality Types.  Based on Jung’s observations, the starting point is that when people’s minds are active they are involved in one of two mental activities:
Myers Briggs Personality Types

  1. Perceiving: Taking information in
  2. Judging: Processing information to reach to conclusions

He identified two ways in which people take in information, based on:

  1. Sensing: Real time tangible data
  2. Intuition:  Holistic,”big picture”, pattern/connection data

He identified two ways in which people process information, based on:

  1. Thinking: Analytical logical, objective, “tough” evaluation
  2. Feeling: Empathic, subjective, “tender” assessment

Jung also observed that people tend to be energised by one of two orientations:

  1. Extraversion (extroverts): People, experience, activity, external focus
  2. Introversion (introverts): Ideas, memories, emotions, inner focus

Finally, Jung observed that people use these different functions in a form of hierarchy of preference, described by Jung as functions, namely: Dominant, Auxiliary, Tertiary and Inferior. The Myers Briggs model brings these components together into 16 very different personality types.

2. Accept that fewer than 1 in 50 people think like you do

The practical ramifications of all this are considerable, and especially in a project management situation. Given that the typical Myers Briggs type of a business leader, ENTJ (it is short for Extrovert; Intuition; Thinking; Judging) is only shared by approximately 1.8% of the population, then chances are that less than 1 in 50 of your team members will think in the same way you do. Yet as a project manager, you face the difficult challenge of getting your project team to deliver the project objectives and achieve the business benefits that you anticipate.

But the reality is that people process information in very different ways. They also interpret life in different ways and are motivated by different things. Although they will hear what you say when you outline your vision and strategy, and will probably agree with you, most of them are not able to translate all that into productive purposeful action.

3. Communicate your project vision and goals into actionable steps

This means that during the early stages of a project, the project team needs detailed management in the attempt to improve their commitment and working towards the same goal and objectives. As the project manager it is your responsibility to make no assumptions, and to communicate those actionable steps.

By taking account of team member’s individual differences, you need to spell out the actionable steps you wish them to take. By doing this you will stand a far higher chance of building a strong committed team who is motivated to achieve the project goal.

4. Achieve Leadership Success

An integral aspect of successful leadership in project management lies in understanding:

  • The drivers of human motivation
  • The difference in individual motivational drivers
  • Individual differences in mental processing functions

And also, in realizing that not only are their motivational drivers different to yours – their thought processes are different as well.  Subscribe to my RSS and blog (to the right) not to miss future project management articles and tips!

If you are based in South Africa, and you would like to have your team assessed with the MBTI instrument, please contact Willem Conradie & Associates – Assessment, Learning and Development Consultants, for a professional service at willem@willemconradie.co.za.

Thanks to Stephen Warrilow for permission to use information from his Meyers Briggs article. Stephen, based in Bristol, England, works with companies across the UK providing specialist support to directors delivery significant change initiatives. Take advantage of his 7 FREE “How to Do It” downloads that will take you through all of the key stages of “How to manage change” – and show you how to manage change successfully.


Linky

Myers Briggs PersonalityType Indicator – A Project Manager Tool

Myers Briggs for Human Resource Management

Myers Briggs Type Indicators
Human Resource Management is one of the key knowledge areas that project managers need to be efficient in.  When you are leading and managing people on projects and you want to make the most effective use of people involved with the project, an understanding of the Myers Briggs Personality Type Indicator (MBTI) tool is essential.

The purpose of this article is to educate and equip project managers with a thorough understanding and appreciation of the Myers Briggs personality type indicators.  It will explain how people process information in very different ways. They also interpret life in different ways and are motivated by different things.  By recognising the differences in people, the project manager is empowered to be a more effective leader who in turn will have a more motivated team.

What is Myers Briggs Type Indicator?

The Myers Briggs [personality or psychological] Type Indicators are based on the theories of Carl Jung, which he developed to attempt to explain the differences between normal healthy people. Based on observations, Jung came to the view that differences in behaviour are the result of innate tendencies of people to use their minds in different ways.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) assessment is a psychometric questionnaire designed to measure psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions. Source: Wikipedia.  The MBTI instrument is called “the best-known and most trusted personality assessment tool available today. The publisher, CPP (formerly Consulting Psychologists Press) calls the MBTI tool “the world’s most widely used personality assessment”.

More blind to this than we realise

I have a friend who I connected with instantly from the moment we met. We thought the same way about many things and we shared similar strong points that we used in our very different careers.  Co-incidentally, when we both did the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator questionnaire, we discovered that we shared exactly the same personality type. This explained why we got along so well and why our friendship flourished.

At the same time, while managing many different projects, I came across team members who were typically classified (by colleagues) as difficult people.  Upon taking a closer look, I discovered why! It was due to a very specific Myers-Briggs personality type.  Being aware of the person’s personality type had made me much more effective in dealing with them in such a way as to gain their full trust and commitment to the project.

If I was blind to the existence of Myers-Briggs personality types, I would probably not know how to get past the perception of dealing with a difficult team member in order to achieve the results that I as the project manager wanted and needed.

Not to miss the rest of the article: How to Use Myers Briggs Personality Type Indicator as a project manager tool – where I explain the different components of the personality types and how that will help you achieve leadership success (next blog post), please subscribe to the RSS feed.

Also subscribe to my blog to receive more project management articles and tips in your inbox.

If you are based in South Africa, and you would like to have your team assessed with the MBTI instrument, please contact Willem Conradie & Associates – Assessment, Learning and Development Consultants, for a professional service at willem@willemconradie.co.za.

Linky

Stakeholder Management Best Practice Tools

Essential skills for stakeholder management

Stakeholder Management Best Practice Tools audio

Stakeholder management requires getting commitment from stakeholders as the cornerstone of success in projects.  The needs and concerns of stakeholders define the project plan. As a follow-up from the previous stakeholder management best practices article, I want to share with you a best practice communication tool as an essential skill for stakeholder management.

How to communicate Smart, measureable, attainable, realistic, time-bound

The tool that I have used successfully in projects before, is called “Conditions of Satisfaction” or COS. As soon as the project manager identifies who the key stakeholders are, he needs to have a discussion with the customer(s) to determine what their conditions for satisfaction are. It is necessary to make the COS statements specific, measureable, attainable, realistic/relevant, time bound (SMART).

These conditions are then communicated back to the project team, partners and vendors.  Once the conditions are determined, they must be agreed and summarised in writing for the customer(s).

Once documented, add any agreed-upon actions to meet them, as well as the planned completion dates. Post the COS to the project repository.

Examples of conditions of satisfaction (COS) are:

  • Sponsor expects external consultant to be on-site, during core hours
    • Action: consultant will be on-site between 9am and 4pm and log this on his time-sheet for the duration of the project
  • Sponsor expects skills transfer between specialist and team members who will do roll-out and support
    • Action: put skills transfer actions (workshop & presentations) as activities on project plan to track them before end of planning phase
  • Minimize extra cost
    • Action: Try to reduce travel costs, by developing estimates and travel schedule, by having more tele- and video-conferences during execution phase of the project

Communicate the Conditions (COS) to the entire project team and ensure that everyone on the team knows the COS and has plans for how they will help achieve / exceed the COS in the role they play on the project.

Conditions of Satisfaction

At all project meetings, both internal and with the customer, you need to address progress against the COS and identify plans to address any problems. During project closure, the COS will again be discussed to evaluate whether the customer’s conditions were met by the project.  This stakeholder management communications tool leads to a satisfied customer, a happy customer and ultimately a more successful project.

Stakeholder Engagement

Stakeholder management and engagement is an essential skill that project managers need to develop. A successful project needs to satisfy the triple constraint of time, cost and quality/performance, but it must also meet requirements of functionality, reliability, maintainability, efficiency, integration and operability.

How to determine your success

To determine if the project was successful, you need to assess the following:

  • Did the project provide satisfactory benefit to the users?
  • Measure whether value has been added.
  • Did the project completely meet predefined objectives?

For success the project experience should have been positive and the project will have added value. The project would have satisfied the needs and concerns of the stakeholders, as well as the project team members and would have allowed the team to acquire new skills.

If you know of other stakeholder management skills or tools that you have used successfully in your projects, please share those with us in the comments section.

Please click HERE to listen to a recording of this article. If you wish to download a free copy of this audio file, please right click on the link and select “save link as” to save to your desired location.

About the author: Linky van der Merwe is a former Microsoft Project Management Consultant and an IT Project Manager with 14 years IT industry experience and 11 years Project Management experience.

She consults with small-medium business owners and service professionals about project management and project processes, best practices and successful delivery through projects.  She can be reached at linky@virtualprojectconsulting.com

Make Projects Work For You

Linky

Make projects work for your business!

Where the business owner and service professional learn more about project management skills, project management tools and templates and project management methodologies for managing business projects.

 

An effective way to speed up results with business projects is to apply a simple Project Management framework to deliver your projects on time, to budget and with desired quality.

For solutions to:

  • WHAT project management is,
  • WHY your business needs projects,
  • HOW to do project management,
  • WHEN to start a project and
  • WHO must do the work

Discover a basic tool to successful project management, download the Project Management Toolkit for all your business project management needs.

Take Action today and start making a positive difference to your business.

Linky

8 Skills Needed On The Project Management Road To Success

By Linky van der Merwe

What Are The Project Management Skills Needed To Be Successful?

Find a more current version of this article: 10 Skills for your Project Management Path To Success

Are you cut out to be a project manager? I landed in the project management profession by accident, but I stayed there on purpose. It is because I love what I do and I suppose my natural strengths and skills are a good match for doing project management. Whether you have planned to became a Project Manager or whether it happened by accident, it is important to know what your strengths and skills are and if they match the skills needed to be a successful project manager.

Project managers need both leadership and management skills, with a knack for problem solving.

Project managers are there to plan and manage the work – NOT to do it!

So what is the Project Management Skills Set you need to be a successful project manager? Eight key skills needed for project management are explained here (but the list is by no means complete). 

1.   Be a Leader and a Manager

Leaders share and communicate a common vision (future state or end goal); they gain agreement and establish the future direction. They motivate others. Managers are results driven and focus on getting work done against agreed requirements. A good project manager will constantly switch from a leader to a manager as situations require.

2.   Be a Team Builder and a Team Leader

Projects are often cross-functional in that they use people who may not have worked together before. It is up to the project manager to set the atmosphere of the team, and to lead them through the various team development phases to the point where they perform as a team.

3.    Be an Excellent Communicator

Being a communicator means recognising that it’s a two-way street. Information comes into the project and information goes out of the project. All communications on your project should be clear and complete.

As a project manager you will have to deal with both written and oral communications. Some examples are documents, meetings, reviews, reports, and assessments. A good mental guideline is “who needs this information, who gathers and delivers it, when or how often do they need it, and in what form will I give it to them”.

4.   Be a Good Organizer

Let’s just think of the aspects you will need to organize; project filing including all documentation, contracts, e-mails, memo’s, reviews, meetings, specialist documents, requirements and specifications, reports, changes, issues, risks, etc.

It’s almost impossible to stay organized without having Time Management Skills – so add this to your list!

5.   Be a Competent and Consistent Planner

The skill of planning can’t be underestimated (and neither can estimating!). There are known and logical steps in creating plans. As a project manager you will certainly own the Project Plan, but it must be created with input from the team. Examples are Test Plans, Risk Management Plans, Hand-over Plans, Benefit Realisation Plans, etc. As long as you’re aware that planning should become second nature to you.

6.   Be a Problem Solver

Fortunately, this is a skill that can be learned.

Firstly, you need to identify the possible ’causes’ that lead to the problem ’symptom’. Now, causes can come from a variety of sources, some are: 

  • interpersonal problems
  • internal sources
  • external sources
  • technical sources
  • management sources
  • communication
  • opinions or perceptions

Having found the root causes, the next step is to analyze possible options and alternatives, and determine the best course of action to take in order to resolve the problem(s).

7.    Be a Negotiator and Influencer

Negotiation is working together with other people with the intention of coming to a joint agreement. And for all these you need to have some influencing skills. Influencing is getting events to happen by convincing the other person that your way is the better way – even if it’s not what they want. Influencing power is the ability to get people to do things they would not do otherwise.

8.   Set Up and Manage Budgets

At the heart of this is the skill of estimating – particularly cost estimates. Nearly always the project manager will need certain knowledge of financial techniques and systems along with accounting principles.

Part of the Project Plan will be something called the Cost Plan. This will show the planned cost against a time-scale. The PM will want to get involved in purchasing, quoting, reconciling invoices, time sheets, etc.

The project manager then needs to establish what has actually happened as opposed to what was planned and to forecast the expected final costs.

Well, this is only a summary of the main areas.

If you are new to project management, don’t be overwhelmed by all this – there are well understood methodologies, tools, guidelines, and procedures to help you on your way to developing the important life-skills of Project Management.

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